Black Gate

Read this book. Go to your nearest comic shop and pick up the trade paperback collection. Don’t know where your nearest comic shop is located? Go to the Comic Shop Locator, type in your zip code and find out. Is it just easier to order a copy online and have it delivered to your home? Then go to IDW Publishing and order a copy. You can even order a digital copy if you don’t want to wait for delivery.

Why do you need to read this book? Because this comic book is about what’s going on right now.

The story begins with Arcadia Alvarado, governor of New Mexico and Presidential candidate. It’s a story about a woman running for President. It’s a story about the daughter of Mexican immigrants. It’s also a story about a woman who was abducted by aliens. So, yeah, this is a comic book (written in 2012, by the way) that deals with the possibility of a woman running for President as the candidate of a major political party. It’s also a comic book about a Presidential campaign where immigration reform is a key issue. It’s also a comic book about a Presidential campaign mired in conspiracy theories that leave people uncertain about what to believe. But that’s not what’s going on right now. That’s what went on in 2016.

Arcadia Alvarado was forcibly removed from her car by strangers. She was stripped naked and had a foreign object inserted in her anus. She was told afterwards that no one would believe her story if she said what happened and even if someone did believe her, there was nothing anyone could do about it. Either way, if she tells anyone about what happened, she believes that her career will be over.

Saucer Country is a story about rape. It’s about a group of powerful individuals who routinely abuse people and suffer no consequences for their actions. It’s about victims too afraid to speak out until one woman finds the courage to name her abusers. And it’s about the friends, family, and co-workers who urge her to stay quiet for her own good. If none of that sounds hauntingly familiar, you haven’t been paying attention to current events.

Saucer Country is more relevant today than when it was originally written. Find a copy and see for yourself.

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Michael Penkas is an infrequent contributor to Black Gate. His mystery novel, Mistress Bunny and the Cancelled Client, is available in lots of different places. He maintains a website that you should check out.

A short review this month simply because there’s not so much to unpack here. The Umbra Sprite, the Gracklethorns, Kevin’s wife, and Kevin’s children are all absent from this issue. Meaning that it’s just Kevin and some monster lady that we’ve never seen before (and will probably never see again).

Really, this issue is meant to tie us back to themes from Hero Discovered and Hero Defined, so if you haven’t read those titles first, none of it will make any sense to you. The Queen of the Unending Dead tells Kevin that he’s the reincarnation (or avatar) of Gilgamesh, which is something broached in Hero Defined. She also tells him that the Lord of the Hunt has a claim on his soul, which is something already suggested in Hero Discovered. Then he fights an army of zombies. Then he kills the Queen of the Unending Dead with an exploding park bench. Then he falls off a cliff. Then he gets in an argument with an ATM.

Honestly, after five issues in (I’m counting issue #0), I get why some people might start pulling out of this series. Comics are expensive, we’re in almost twenty dollars deep here, and we really haven’t gotten that much of a story yet. Yeah, Matt Wagner’s art is always crisp and vibrant, no matter what he’s drawing. But Kevin pretty much wandered away from everyone else in the plot to have a fight with yet another monster and hasn’t learned anything that he didn’t already know from the first two volumes of this series. I get that, from the title of the series, he’s not going to win this one, but it feels weird that we’ve got an antagonist who’s still making the same mistakes after all these years, partially invalidating the value of his supposed lessons in previous books.

Of course, I’m sticking around to the bitter end on this one. But if the rest of you want to save your money and come back at the end for the collected edition, I totally understand.

Mage #4 is available in print at all decent comic shops, as are back issues to volumes one and two of the series. If you prefer getting your comics digitally, then check out Mage: The Hero Discovered, Mage: The Hero Defined, and all the latest issues of Mage: The Hero Denied at Comixology.

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Michael Penkas has been a fan of Matt Wagner for longer than some of you have been alive. He’s written a dominatrix detective mystery novel, Mistress Bunny and the Cancelled Client, as well as dozens of ghost stories. He occasionally maintains a website and regularly participates at various reading events throughout Chicago.